Poetry and Peacemaking: Joachim du Bellay and the Truce of Vaucelles

Abstract

This article will focus on two features of the truce hinted at in various theoretical accounts: the first is the fragility of the truce, the fact that it is less elaborately negotiated and not ratified in the ways that treaties are. This means that the meaning and efficacy of the truce is deeply reliant on how it is perceived or framed. The second, related, issue is the truce’s relationship to time, the sense that it may well come suddenly, elicit quick responses, and disappear just as quickly. To study these two features of the truce, I want to look at how it is depicted in lyric poetry. Poetry, after all, is the literary form that most directly asks us to think about the voice of the single individual. It registers the impress of external events on the self. Moreover, poetry is very often occasional, especially in the early modern period. Thus truces, which are contingent, often sudden, events, intersect easily with poems, which are generated in response to shifts in political life, or emotional climate. Poetry offers a space in which we can reflect on the relationship between peacemaking and the status of the individual – as subject, as political actor, as witness. The article focuses upon the Truce of Vaucelles (1556), which placed the French in Rome – among them the poet Joachim du Bellay – in a position of total ambiguity. On the one hand, peace had broken out. That seemed to be a good thing. On the other hand, the news placed the French in a very dubious light, branded as ‘traitors’, as they tried to work with their Roman diplomatic contacts.